The planning profession has an indispensable role to play in helping communities adapt to climatechange. This report describes how various professionals have recognized the salience of climatechange adaptation and have prepared guidelines, suggestions, and best practices on how a jurisdictionshould go about adapting to the desired condition. This study reviews the literature on climate changeadaptation and in particular, relevant guidelines that have been created to assist communities throughthese complex processes. The author synthesizes these guidelines into a set of common fundamentalobjectives that are used to analyze the District of Elkford, British Columbia, the case study of thisproject and the first community in the province to integrate climate adaptation into its officialcommunity plan (OCP).After reviewing publicly available documents on Elkford, and interviewing individuals involved inElkford's adaptation planning process, the author found the following results:

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Communicating about the risks associated with climate change is of utmost importance whendoing adaptation planning with smaller communities.

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Engaging a representative and diverse group of stakeholders can assist decision-making andoffer the public an avenue to voice their concerns.

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There are many constraints in place to do climate adaptation planning and implementation of action items. This may include rigid and inflexible design standards and bylaws that preventa community from becoming more resilient. Reforming these standards to account foruncertainty could be a cost-effective strategy in light of a changing climate.

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Evaluating the costs and benefits of adaptation options is a challenging proposition given thehigh uncertainties. However, simple financial analyses comparing adaptation alternatives canbe done, and could be presented to the public to boost capacity for action.The author includes a series of recommendations at the end of the report for consideration by theDistrict of Elkford and for BC Provincial Ministries. The conclusion summarizes some major lessonslearned, and highlights opportunities for further research on this topic.